


Kidnapped

by IcyPheonix



Series: VRAINS AU [4]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Kidnapping, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IcyPheonix/pseuds/IcyPheonix
Summary: All Ai wants is to keep Yusaku safe, which means keeping him out of the coming conflict (because he just knows Yusaku will get involved).So obviously the solution is to kidnap him and keep him safe. Should be simple enough, right?Right?
Series: VRAINS AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1253021
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So HERE IT IS, the third part to this story line!

The silence in Yusaku’s apartment was positively deafening. Not that quiet wasn’t unusual, as Yusaku lived alone after all, but this sort of silence was different, it was stifling. 

It had started when Yusaku had returned home after the fight with Bowman. The first thing he’d noticed was Roboppi lying in the middle of the floor, unresponsive, as if the battery had died. But the battery was still fully charged and nothing Yusaku did could get the small cleaner bot back online. 

Then, a few days later, Ai was gone. Yusaku woke up to find his duel disk dark and Ai gone. And he didn’t even have the decency to leave a note or anything.

With Ai and Roboppi both gone the apartment was so unnaturally quiet. Before he would hear, at any given time, the low hum of Roboppi’s motor as the little bot trundled around the apartment, chasing dust bunnies, the sound of Ai and Roboppi’s voices as they chattered away or the sounds of the tv as they watched their soaps. But now, nothing. No voices, no machine sounds, just the tick of a clock and the sounds of the outside.  


Yusaku sighed as he pushed his chair away from his desk. He’d scoured the net to find any trace of Ai, but when Ai didn’t want to be found, he wasn’t going to be found. Heck, Ai might not have been even in Den City or Link VRAINS anymore. Not that he blamed Ai.

He ran his fingers through his hair as he stared up at the ceiling. Even though they’d defeated Bowman and saved Link VRAINS, he hadn’t been able to save the Ignis, to save Ai’s friends. It was a pyrrhic victory. 

Was that why Ai had left, did he hate him now for failing to save the Ignis? He prayed that that wasn’t the case, though he wouldn’t blame Ai if it was.

He stretched his arms out with a grunt and sigh as he stood up. He’d spent the day searching and found nothing and if he kept at it he was sure to go until dawn, again, and he’d promised Kusanagi-san that he would actually get some sleep and go to school. If he didn’t Kusanagi-san was sure to find out, somehow. He always did. And the last thing he wanted was a dressing down from him about that again.  


He dragged himself over to his bed, collapsing into it in a heap with a groan, burying his face into his pillow. Maybe he would feel better after some sleep. He was just about to close his eyes when,

_ Tink _

A tiny, almost imperceptible sound broke the mothering silence and for a moment, Yusaku thought he was hearing things.

_ Tink _

It sounded again and Yusaku lifted his head and looked around the room for the source of the noise. It sounded like something tapping on glass and he looked over to his window just in time to see a small stone bounce off of it. 

Yusaku frowned, who on earth would be throwing rocks at his window, and why? Bratty kids wanting to annoy him? Someone wanting to start a fight? He contemplated ignoring whoever it was but another stone came and he realized that whoever it was was probably not going to stop till they got his attention. And he wasn't going to get any sleep if it kept up.  


Carefully he made his way to the window to find out who exactly was throwing stones at him. Peering out he saw two figures standing on the sidewalk below, one with a handful of tiny pebbles that he was throwing at the window. Strange, Yusaku didn’t recognize either of the two figures.

The first was tall, certainly a whole head taller than Yusaku at least, and dressed like they’d come from a costume party or something. He moved and Yusaku could make out what seemed to be formal attire-a nice shirt and waistcoat under a long and rather dramatic looking cape, complete with gold epaulettes. His hair was long and dark and seemed to be highlighted with gold and Yusaku could swear that his eyes were glowing in the dark, like a cat’s.

Beside the man was a much smaller and younger looking figure, a kid really, with bright blue hair and wearing an oversized blue sweater and bouncing from foot to foot as they looked up at him.  


They noticed Yusaku and the caped man smiled widely, dropping the handful of stones as he waved at Yusaku enthusiastically. Then, he beckoned for Yusaku to come to him.

Instinct told Yusaku that this was a bad idea and not to do it, he didn’t know these people. And yet, they seemed as if they knew him, if the way they were smiling and beckoning was any indication.

Well, he could at least go to the door and tell them to go away, surely they wouldn’t try to chase him into the apartment, that would cause too much of a commotion.

Yusaku nodded and, grabbing his shoes, made his way out of his apartment and down to the front door. All he wanted to do was get some sleep and tell these people to go away.

“Yusaku-chan!” 

The man greeted Yusaku enthusiastically as he opened the door and Yusaku froze in place.

“How do you know my name?” he asked. “Who are you?” As he looked at them he noticed something he hadn’t noticed before from his window, glowing blue diamonds on their necks. Peculiar to say the least, and oddly familiar but he couldn’t quite place from where.

“That’s so mean Yusaku-chan,” pouted the man dramatically as he folded his arms over his chest. “You can’t really have forgotten your Ai-chan already?”

Everything around Yusaku seemed to grind to a halt as he stared at the man, golden eyes shining in the darkness as he smiled at Yusaku. 

“Ai?”

There was no way, it couldn’t be him, Ai was like, 3 inches tall and was a tiny purple humanoid, he didn’t look like an attractive man. He stared at him in silence as he stood in the doorway, swaying on the spot slightly.

Then it hit him, where he’d seen the glowing blue diamonds before, they were power indicators on the SOLtis androids that SOL Technologies was rolling out.

He looked at the man again, in his purple clothes and black hair and golden eyes and...and a pair of earrings shaped and coloured like Ai’s head.

“Ai?” he croaked again, stepping outside and letting the door close behind him. “Is it, really you?” he asked, reaching a hand out.

“Who else would it be Yusaku-chan?”

“But-but, you left,” he said, taking a step towards Ai and letting his hand come to rest on his chest, just to confirm that he was actually there and that he wasn’t imagining it. “How are you...why are you…” His voice shook as he spoke. 

“Don’t forget Roboppi!” chimed the android beside Ai.

“R-Roboppi?”

“Uh-huh. Big Bro got me this body and made me smart!”

Yusaku looked between the two androids, Roboppi grinning widely as they rocked back and forth on their feet and Ai looking a little sheepish. 

“Are these, SOLtis?” asked Yusaku. “Where did you get these?”

“We’re borrowing them for a little bit,” said Ai. “But that’s not really that important is it?”

Yusaku sighed, he probably didn’t want to know where Ai actually got the SOLtis from, it likely wasn’t legal and he was better off not knowing.

“What are you doing here?” asked Yusaku. “You left. I thought...I thought…I thought that you hated me.”

Ai blanched, “Hate you? How could I hate you? No I just, I needed some time. But I’m back now.”

“Yeah, yeah you are.” A tiny smile tugged at Yusaku’s lips as he buried his face into Ai’s chest, gripping his shirt tightly. To Yusaku’s surprise he was warm, almost like a living person, not cold like a machine. A soft whirring sounded from deep inside his chest, like a fan inside a computer.

“I’m so glad to see you again.”

A hand patted the top of his head gently, almost comfortingly. “I’m glad to see you too Yusaku,” said Ai. “That’s why I’m sorry.”

“Huh? What are you sorry...for…” Yusaku trailed off as he looked up at Ai. This time his eyes  _ were _ glowing, a bright eerie gold in the darkness. “Ai...” The words died on his lips as he met Ai’s gaze and everything around him grew fuzzy and distant and the last thing he saw before his mind was plunged into darkness was Ai’s sad face looking down at him.

“I’m sorry Yusaku,” repeated Ai as he caught Yusaku in his arms as he fell. “But, I’m going to have to do some things that I know you won’t approve of. And I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have, so you need to sit this fight out alright?” 

Carefully he scooped Yusaku up and into his arms bridal style, one arm wrapped around his shoulders and the other under his knees.

“So just you sleep until this is all over, alright?”

“Master’s gonna be ok, right Big Bro?” asked Roboppi, looking up at Ai with a worried face. 

Ai offered the small android a weak smile. “He’ll be fine, I promise. But for now, we need to get him somewhere safe.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter should probably be called 'Kusanagi and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day'

Shoichi wasn’t sure if he believed in a higher power or not. Sometimes it felt like there was some other force, or forces, at work, pulling them from pinches and exacting miracles that he could thank the heavens for. 

But on the other hand, if there WAS a higher power there were days he wanted nothing more than to fist fight it in the parking lot behind the hotdog truck for all the shit it let the lot of them go through. 

It was barely 7:30 in the morning and already it was looking to be one of those days. 

The first strike came in the form of an email from Akira marked as ‘urgent’ that he found waiting for him. 

It wasn’t very long and didn’t say much, just that there was a situation that had arisen and they all needed to talk as soon as possible. At the end Akira had requested that he pass this message along to Ryoken and the Knights of Hanoi. The fact that he wanted them in on this too did not bode well and was worrying. 

The second strike came while he was in the midst of composing an email to let Hanoi know about the situation and his phone went off. Glancing over at the screen, on the off chance that it was a wrong number of scam call, he was surprised and a bit worried to see Homura-kun’s number on screen. He wasn’t the sort to phone him up for a social call, so this couldn’t have been anything good.

“Hello?”

“K-kusanagi-san,” Homura’s voice shook as he spoke, wavering with concern. 

“What’s wrong, Homura-kun?” he asked, trying not to let his own worry show through. 

“It’s Yusaku. He’s gone.”

Shoichi’s heart stopped in his chest as he had to tighten his grip on his phone so he didn’t drop it. 

“What?”

He’d always dreaded that one day he would get a phone call saying that something had happened to Yusaku or heaven forbid, that he needed to identify a body. 'He's gone' was bar none the worst thing homura could have said and struck the most fear into his heart and he really hoped he was wrong.

“He, he didn’t show up where we meet to walk to school so I swung by his place to see if he was still there, maybe he’d slept in or something you know? But his door was still unlocked and no one was home. A-and I called Aoi up and she hasn’t seen him either. He’s just...gone.”

Still holding the phone, Shoichi took a deep breath to compose himself. Ok, that was marginally better. Only a little though.

“And you’re sure he’s not at school already and just went on ahead?” he asked.

“Yusaku? You really think he’d go to school _early_?”

Alright, that was fair. “Have you called anyone else yet?”

“No, only you and Aoi. It doesn’t even look like a break-in, it looks like he just left.”

Well, at least that ruled out a robbery or break-in. Perhaps he’d gone on a walk somewhere? No, Yusaku would have locked his door if that were the case. 

Shoichi bit his lip, he hadn’t received any calls about Yusaku being in the hospital but…

“I’ll make some phone calls, in the meantime, I need you to come down to the plaza where the truck is. See if you can get hold of Miss. Zaizen if you can,” he said. “It’s...important.”

“I guess we’re not getting to school then huh?”

He sighed, “I suppose not. I’ll see you later.”

Shoichi leaned back in his chair with a sigh as he set his phone down. What on earth was going on anymore? He picked up his phone again and began dialling the number for the hospital, on the off chance that Yusaku had been admitted but they hadn’t been able to reach him.

As he finished with his call to the hospital, Shoichi wasn’t sure what to do. No one fitting Yusaku’s description had been checked in to the hospital the night before or that morning, meaning that was one less place for him to be. He stared at the email and contemplated telling Ryoken about the current situation, if anyone could help track him down it would be him.

He just hoped that Yusaku was ok, wherever he was, and he really wasn’t looking forward to strike number 3, as bad things always came in threes and the day was still young.

Link VRAINS was empty. 

After the whole Bowman fiasco SOL Technologies had closed it to the public to work on damage control as well fixing Link VRAINS itself, and its security systems. And seeing it empty was eerie. Even in the dead middle of the night users could be found wandering around. But now it was a veritable ghost town. And it didn’t help that they were going to a place that most users didn’t have access to anyways, Link VRAINS’ Central Station, a place generally only accessible to those with admin privileges.

“Thank you for coming.”

As Shoichi and Soulburner entered the large station they were greeted by Akira and Blue Maiden, already logged in and waiting. 

“Is Playmaker going to be coming later?” asked Akira, frowning as he looked at the pair. 

Shoichi shook his head. “We don’t know where he is right now. He’s missing.”

“What?”

“It’s true,” said Soulburner and Blue Maiden nodded in confirmation.

Akira sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he did his best to keep his composure. “This is not the news we need right now. Who else knows about this?”

“Just us, and Hanoi,” said Shoichi. 

“Hanoi?!”

“If anyone can help us locate him I figured it would be them. Besides, there's more of them in numbers, they can look for him while we're here.”

“I just hope you’re right.”

“What did you want to talk to us about?” asked Shoichi. 

“I’ll tell you once the rest arrive.”

“Who else is coming?” asked Soulburner.

As if on cue, three more people materialized in the room with them; Ghost Girl, Blood Shepherd and GO Onizuka.

Akira turned back to Shoichi, “Do you know if Hanoi is going to join us?” he asked.

“I don’t. I told them about the meeting, if they come or not is up to them.”

“We’re here.”

Shoichi spun around to see Revolver and Specter striding towards them. Specter stayed a few steps behind Revolver, giving GO a very sour look as he walked past, hands tightening at his side as he quickened his pace.

“I take it that this is all of us?” asked Revolver, glancing around the group. 

“It would seem to be, yes,” said Akira with a nod.

“Aren’t we missing someone kind of important?” asked Ghost Girl. “You know, Playmaker?”

Shoichi fidgeted nervously on the spot, ah he was afraid of this. “I’m afraid he’s...missing.”

Hushed whispers flitted through the group and they exchanged glances. 

“I’m beginning to think you should consider putting a tracking device on Playmaker, he seems to have a knack for getting into trouble,” said Specter.

“I have Faust and Vyra searching for him as we speak,” said Revolver. “Zaizen, why have you called us here? This obviously wasn’t a social call.”

“No, it wasn’t, so I’ll do my best to be brief,” said Akira. “Late last night someone hacked into the new SOLtis and used them to attack our top executive, Queen.”

Specter snorted. “How ironic, attacked by something of your own creation. And now you want us to find them right?”

“I can assure you, it’s not funny. And no, I want you to protect me. When they attacked Queen they stole a code key, one code key of two, the second of which is in my possession.”

“What’s so bad about someone stealing these keys?” asked Soulburner.

“Whoever has both keys has access to SOL Technologies’ central computer, they would be able to take over the company and in turn have access to everything we control. Including, among other things, the SOLtis.”

An army of rogue SOLtis sounded like something out of a horror movie, a bad time to be sure.

“Do we have any idea who’s behind this?” asked Shoichi.

“We know more than that, he gave us his identity.” Akira turned and gestured to the floating screen behind him and a video appeared in the space where nothing had been before. On the screen was a lavishly dressed looking man sitting in a chair, joined shortly by a much younger and more chipper companion. Startlingly, they both bore the glowing diamonds indicative of SOLtis.

“Hello,” he began, waving at the camera. “Zaizen, I have Queen’s code key, as I’m sure you know by now. Which now means that you’re number 1 at SOL Technologies. And I’m sure you know what that means. So, I’m giving you a choice. In three days I’m coming for your code key. You can either hand it over without a fuss, or, I’ll have to take it by force. Between you and me, I’d go with the first option, I’d rather avoid having to hurt you if I can.” The man tilted his head slightly before sitting upright and clapping his hands together. “Ah, allow me to properly introduce myself. I’m Ai.”

"And I'm Roboppi!"

“What?”

“Ai?”

“The Dark Ignis?”

“How can that be?”

Noises of confusion and horror filled the air and Shoichi felt his tongue turn to lead in his mouth. That was _Ai_?

Akira could only grimace at their reactions but said nothing, letting the video continue to play.

“Three days Zaizen,” continued Ai, holding up three fingers. “I hope you make the right decision. Bye bye!”

The video ended and flickered off and the moment it did so, all hell broke loose.

“What’s going on?” exclaimed Soulburner. “How is that Ai? Why would he do this?”

“I don’t know,” replied Akira. “All I know is what he said in that message.”

“He’s an A.I,” said Blood Shepherd very matter of factly, all eyes turning to him. “An enemy to all humans, or did you forget the last battle?”

“Ai’s not the enemy!” shouted Soulburner.

“Well, that video would seem to suggest otherwise,” said Blood Shepherd. 

Soulburner clenched his fists and Shoichi reached out a hand, placing it on his shoulder in a reassuring gesture, but also in case he should need to grab him to stop him from starting a fight. he just hoped he could restrain him.

“If Playmaker was here he’d tell you the same thing!”

"Indeed." Blood Shepherd looked around the room, at each of them before speaking again. “Does it strike anyone else as odd that Playmaker just happens to go missing at the same time that the Dark Ignis made its move?”

“Shepherd!” Ghost Girl hissed, grabbing his arm. 

“What are you implying?” asked Soulburner, shaking so much that Shoichi feared he _was_ going to have to physically restrain him.

“Has anyone considered the fact that perhaps Playmaker isn’t here with us, because he’s with the Dark Ignis?”

And there it was, strike number three of the bad things happening list. Shoichi didn’t want to think that Yusaku had left to side with Ai in what was basically a revenge mission, but then again if anyone would understand his pain and desire for revenge it would be Yusaku. And with Yusaku nowhere to be found there was no way to confirm or deny any of this. For all they knew, this was exactly why Yusaku was missing.

“Stop it, both of you!” snapped Akira, raising his voice and startling the pair into silence. “Playmaker fought so that humans and Ignis could coexist, he wouldn’t throw all that away to do, this.”

“And yet here we are, and he is not.”

“I think it’s time for you to go. I’ll fill you in on everything later,” hissed Ghost Girl, grabbing Blood Shepherd by the arm and pulling him aside. “Now.”

Blood Shepherd huffed in annoyance but turned and, with a short wave of his hand, vanished in a flurry of blue pixels.

“I’m sorry about him,” replied Ghost Girl with a sigh. 

Shoichi breathed a sigh of relief and loosened his grip on Soulburner’s shoulder, at least that situation had been defused without punches being thrown.

“He’s right though,” said Shoichi. “Playmaker isn’t here and we don’t know where he is.”

Soulburner frowned and looked over at Shoichi, a worried expression on his face. “You don’t really think he could have gone and sided with Ai, do you?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to keep reminding myself that since Trapped and Possessed are in the same canon as this that they basically all know who each other is now lol


End file.
